a spreading of wings, a bating of breath, a sense of something coming

Revelations

Words like ash and smoke rise from candles lighting a dark room. The room: my mind — the candle light: these (ephemeral) thoughts I cannot avoid.

If I had moments to spare and images to compare, I’d be lost in a sea of sorrow here. But I escape the snares of sadness through narrow passages. Like a hare through thorny branches. I lost some tufts of fur and scraped some skin off the surface — but getting away is better than death.

I have no desire yet to die.
I have a fire still, smoldering in a cracked shell caught up from the sea. It may be burning through the sage, but for now the scent in the air is nice. I think the moon wants to breathe it. I think the stars — proof of the past long gone — agree.

I’d like to believe, anyway.

Magic is only the explanations I don’t yet have.
Your love was magic, and I longed to have it. Even in the wake of desolation after it. Even as I sit alone by candle smoke and cinder light, I am spinning, reeling confused and upside down from it.

It was a firestorm that sorched me. A hurricane that blew through me. A quake that shook my pieces all apart. It was a pattern I could not predict. A formation I could not explain. A storm that, despite the warnings, I could not weather.

Every second that passes, I want what I had back with a stronger passion. And I know, the longer the delay between the two, the less likely I am to get it.

This is the crash against the shore. The end of a long ripple that became a troubled wave. I rode it all the way. The cap has crested white. And all I can do is wait it out.

I learned this all when I was forming, learning, first touching water:
Tumble with the power of the ocean because if you fight it, you’ll drown.

My roots go down into the wet sand, find purchase in salty water, and grow flowers of tropical colors.

I will return to the islands to shed this old skin. To grow a tougher, lighter weight one to fly away in. Thousands of feathers, hollow bones. Ears that hear in all directions. Eyes that see through darkness by triangles of motion, not light.

And I’ll do it on old beaches peppered with a glistening brilliant purple-blue. Because my life began there and my origin story never moved.